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Dessert

To Preserve Pears

A method for preserving pears in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Preserve Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Place the pears in a kettle and cover them with water.

  2. Simmer until they yield to gentle pressure.

  3. Remove the pears with a skimmer and place them in cold water.

  4. Peel the pears, leaving a small bit of the stem and blossom end.

  5. Pierce each pear to the core at the blossom end.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 pound of fruit.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the pears and let it stand overnight.

  3. Reheat the syrup to a boil and pour it over the pears again.

  4. Let the pears sit for a day or two.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil gently until the pears are clear.

  2. Transfer the pears to jars and boil the syrup until thick.

  3. Pour the thick syrup over the pears in the jars.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pears
The fruit, which softens and turns clear as it cooks slowly in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as the syrup thickens, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the pears are clear. Gentle heat lets sugar slowly penetrate the softened fruit and turn it clear without breaking it apart. Vigorous boiling can split the tender pears and make the syrup cloudy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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